Clear at sunrise, and cool enough that the crickets are still. I notice the big tulip tree at the woods’ edge has shed all its drought-stressed leaves and is green again.
drought
Tree crickets rather than birdsong: it feels like late summer already. But after yesterday’s soaking rain, leaves no longer droop. I can smell the earth.
Partly cloudy and cool. After yesterday evening’s brief rains, the happiness of the plants in my yard is nearly palpable. Formerly desiccated bergamot blossoms have swollen back into bloom.
The rains continue. The last peony blossom collapsed in the night, and the last purple iris has opened. Where mowed grass had died, there’s a blush of green.
Rain! That unfamiliar whisper rising to the level of a murmur. And a Carolina wren rushing about, making sure the world knows.
A slight sheen on the leaves at sunrise—what passes for rain these days must’ve fallen. The faintest smell of soil. An ovenbird’s endless lesson.
Peony leaves shriveling from drought even as their antique, cream-white heads still bloom. Ashen skies. A Cooper’s hawk skims the treetops without setting off a single squirrel.
A bleary, bloodshot sun in an ash-white sky. Pileated woodpeckers foraging just inside the woods’ edge cackle like sacred clowns.
Raininess without rain. The peonies remain unbowed. Half-grown bracken fronds in my thin-soiled yard are already turning yellow.
The appeal of a cool, clear morning is beginning to wear as thin as the splay of browning daffodil leaves below the porch. I lapse into fantasies of fog and rain.
The asters in my garden are finally opening, purple and gold above new, green growth, the lower leaves all dead from the summer’s drought.
The cicada chorus ebbs and swells. I notice the big tulip tree has shed all its drought-yellowed leaves from a month ago and is green again.
The drought forces plants into triage: the big tulip tree is turning yellow from the inside out; perennials are dying from the bottom up.
Ten percent of the tulip tree’s leaves have turned yellow in response to the drought. Goldfinches pass through like a yellow wind.